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China’s approval of the drug oligomannate earlier this month for treating mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease has been met with surprise and skepticism from some members of the scientific community, who claim that the preclinical data raise questions about the underlying mechanism of the drug. One microbiome researcher has pointed out inconsistencies between the researchers’ data and their proposed mechanism for how oligomannate could treat Alzheimer’s.
“The field is seeing this [research] with a large dose of skepticism,” Malú Tansey, a neuroimmunologist at the University of Florida College of Medicine, tells The Scientist.
On November 2, Shanghai Green Valley Pharmaceuticals announced that oligomannate, an oligosaccharide mixture derived from brown algae, had been approved by the National Medical Product Administration (NMPA), China’s equivalent of the US Food and Drug Administration. The announcement followed the completion of a Phase 3 clinical trial in China that found the drug ...
